PsychoReligious

Psychedelics and Religious Experience

by

Alan Watts

(Originally appeared in the California Law Review,

Vol. 56, No. 1, January 1968, pp. 74-85.)

Copyright Alan Watts & California Law Review.

The experiences resulting from the use of psychedelic drugs are often described in religious terms. They
are therefore of interest to those like myself who, in the tradition of William James,

(1)

are concerned

with the psychology of religion. For more than thirty years I have been studying the causes, the
consequences, and the conditions of those peculiar states of consciousness in which the individual
discovers himself to be one continuous process with God, with the Universe, with the Ground of Being,
or whatever name he may use by cultural conditioning or personal preference for the ultimate and
eternal reality. We have no satisfactory and definitive name for experiences of this kind. The terms
"religious experience," "mystical experience," and "cosmic consciousness" are all too vague and
comprehensive to denote that specific mode of consciousness which, to those who have known it, is as
real and overwhelming as falling in love. This article describes such states of consciousness induced by
psychedelic drugs, although they are virtually indistinguishable from genuine mystical experience. The
article then discusses objections to the use of psychedelic drugs that arise mainly from the opposition
between mystical values and the traditional religious and secular values of Western society.

The Psychedelic Experience

The idea of mystical experiences resulting from drug use is not readily accepted in Western societies.
Western culture has, historically, a particular fascination with the value and virtue of man as an
individual, self-determining, responsible ego, controlling himself and his world by the power of
conscious effort and will. Nothing, then, could be more repugnant to this cultural tradition than the
notion of spiritual or psychological growth through the use of drugs. A "drugged" person is by definition
dimmed in consciousness, fogged in judgment, and deprived of will. But not all psychotropic
(consciousness-changing) chemicals are narcotic and soporific, as are alcohol, opiates, and barbiturates.
The effects of what are now called psychedelic (mind-manifesting) chemicals differ from those of
alcohol as laughter differs from rage, or delight from depression. There is really no analogy between
being "high" on LSD and "drunk" on bourbon. True, no one in either state should drive a car, but neither
should one drive while reading a book, playing a violin, or making love. Certain creative activities and
states of mind demand a concentration and devotion that are simply incompatible with piloting a death-
dealing engine along a highway.

I myself have experimented with five of the principal psychedelics: LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin,

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (1 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

dimethyl-tryptamine (DMT), and cannabis. I have done so, as William James tried nitrous oxide, to see
if they could help me in identifying what might be called the "essential" or "active" ingredients of the
mystical experience. For almost all the classical literature on mysticism is vague, not only in describing
the experience, but also in showing rational connections between the experience itself and the various
traditional methods recommended to induce it-fasting, concentration, breathing exercises, prayers,
incantations, and dances. A traditional master of Zen or Yoga, when asked why such-and-such practices
lead or predispose one to the mystical experience, always responds, "This is the way my teacher gave it
to me. This is the way I found out. If you're seriously interested, try it for yourself." This answer hardly
satisfies an impertinent, scientifically minded, and intellectually curious Westerner. It reminds him of
archaic medical prescriptions compounding five salamanders, powdered gallows rope, three boiled bats,
a scruple of phosphorus, three pinches of henbane, and a dollop of dragon dung dropped when the moon
was in Pisces. Maybe it worked, but what was the essential ingredient?

It struck me, therefore, that if any of the psychedelic chemicals would in fact predispose my
consciousness to the mystical experience, I could use them as instruments for studying and describing
that experience as one uses a microscope for bacteriology, even though the microscope is an "artificial"
and "unnatural" contrivance which might be said to "distort" the vision of the naked eye. However, when
I was first invited to test the mystical qualities of LSD-25 by Dr. Keith Ditman of the Neuropsychiatric
Clinic at UCLA Medical School, I was unwilling to believe that any mere chemical could induce a
genuine mystical experience. At most, it might bring about a state of spiritual insight analogous to
swimming with water wings. Indeed, my first experiment with LSD-25 was not mystical. It was an
intensely interesting aesthetic and intellectual experience that challenged my powers of analysis and
careful description to the utmost.

Some months later, in 1959, I tried LSD-25 again with Drs. Sterling Bunnell and Michael Agron, who
were then associated with the Langley-Porter Clinic, in San Francisco. In the course of two experiments
I was amazed and somewhat embarrassed to find myself going through states of consciousness that
corresponded precisely with every description of major mystical experiences that I had ever read.

(2)

Furthermore, they exceeded both in depth and in a peculiar quality of unexpectedness the three "natural
and spontaneous" experiences of this kind that had happened to me in previous years.

Through subsequent experimentation with LSD-25 and the other chemicals named above (with the
exception of DMT, which I find amusing but relatively uninteresting), I found I could move with ease
into the state of "cosmic consciousness," and in due course became less and less dependent on the
chemicals themselves for "tuning in" to this particular wave length of experience. Of the five
psychedelics tried, I found that LSD-25 and cannabis suited my purposes best. Of these two, the latter---
cannabis---which I had to use abroad in countries where it is not outlawed, proved to be the better. It
does not induce bizarre alterations of sensory perception, and medical studies indicate that it may not,
save in great excess, have the dangerous side effects of LSD.

For the purposes of this study, in describing my experiences with psychedelic drugs I avoid the
occasional and incidental bizarre alterations of sense perception that psychedelic chemicals may induce.

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (2 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

I am concerned, rather, with the fundamental alterations of the normal, socially induced consciousness
of one's own existence and relation to the external world. I am trying to delineate the basic principles of
psychedelic awareness. But I must add that I can speak only for myself. The quality of these experiences
depends considerably upon one's prior orientation and attitude to life, although the now voluminous
descriptive literature of these experiences accords quite remarkably with my own.

Almost invariably, my experiments with psychedelics have had four dominant characteristics. I shall try
to explain them -in the expectation that the reader will say, at least of the second and third, "Why, that's
obvious! No one needs a drug to see that." Quite so, but every insight has degrees of intensity. There can
be obvious-1 and obvious-2---and the latter comes on with shattering clarity, manifesting its
implications in every sphere and dimension of our existence.

The first characteristic is a slowing down of time, a concentration in the present. One's normally
compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of the enormous importance and
interest of what is happening at the moment. Other people, going about their business on the streets,
seem to be slightly crazy, failing to realize that the whole point of life is to be fully aware of it as it
happens. One therefore relaxes, almost luxuriously, into studying the colors in a glass of water, or in
listening to the now highly articulate vibration of every note played on an oboe or sung by a voice.

From the pragmatic standpoint of our culture, such an attitude is very bad for business. It might lead to
improvidence, lack of foresight, diminished sales of insurance policies, and abandoned savings accounts.
Yet this is just the corrective that our culture needs. No one is more fatuously impractical than the
"successful" executive who spends his whole life absorbed in frantic paper work with the objective of
retiring in comfort at sixty-five, when it will all be too late. Only those who have cultivated the art of
living completely in the present have any use for making plans for the future, for when the plans mature
they will be able to enjoy the results. "Tomorrow never comes." I have never yet heard a preacher urging
his congregation to practice that section of the Sermon on the Mount which begins, "Be not anxious for
the morrow...." The truth is that people who live for the future are, as we say of the insane, "not quite all
there"--- or here: by over-eagerness they are perpetually missing the point. Foresight is bought at the
price of anxiety, and when overused it destroys all its own advantages.

The second characteristic I will call awareness of polarity. This is the vivid realization that states, things,
and events that we ordinarily call opposite are interdependent, like back and front, or the poles of a
magnet. By polar awareness one sees that things which are explicitly different are implicitly one: self
and other, subject and object, left and right, male and female-and then, a little more surprisingly, solid
and space, figure and background, pulse and interval, saints and sinners, police and criminals, in-groups
and out-groups. Each is definable only in terms of the other, and they go together transactionally, like
buying and selling, for there is no sale without a purchase, and no purchase without a sale. As this
awareness becomes increasingly intense, you feel that you yourself are polarized with the external
universe in such a way that you imply each other. Your push is its pull, and its push is your pull---as
when you move the steering wheel of a car. Are you pushing it or pulling it?

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (3 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

At first, this is a very odd sensation, not unlike hearing your own voice played back to you on an
electronic system immediately after you have spoken. You become confused, and wait for it to go on!
Similarly, you feel that you are something being done by the universe, yet that the universe is equally
something being done by you-which is true, at least in the neurological sense that the peculiar structure
of our brains translates the sun into light, and air vibrations into sound. Our normal sensation of
relationship to the outside world is that sometimes I push it, and sometimes it pushes me. But if the two
are actually one, where does action begin and responsibility rest? If the universe is doing me, how can I
be sure that, two seconds hence, I will still remember the English language? If I am doing it, how can I
be sure that, two seconds hence, my brain will know how to turn the sun into light? From such
unfamiliar sensations as these, the psychedelic experience can generate confusion, paranoia, and terror-
even though the individual is feeling his relationship to the world exactly as it would be described by a
biologist, ecologist, or physicist, for he is feeling himself as the unified field of organism and
environment.

The third characteristic, arising from the second, is awareness of relativity. I see that I am a link in an
infinite hierarchy of processes and beings, ranging from molecules through bacteria and insects to
human beings, and, maybe, to angels and gods-a hierarchy in which every level is in effect the same
situation. For example, the poor man worries about money while the rich man worries about his health:
the worry is the same, but the difference is in its substance or dimension. I realize that fruit flies must
think of themselves as people, because, like ourselves, they find themselves in the middle of their own
world-with immeasurably greater things above and smaller things below. To us, they all look alike and
seem to have no personality-as do the Chinese when we have not lived among them. Yet fruit flies must
see just as many subtle distinctions among themselves as we among ourselves.

From this it is but a short step to the realization that all forms of life and being are simply variations on a
single theme: we are all in fact one being doing the same thing in as many different ways as possible. As
the French proverb goes, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (the more it varies, the more it is
one). I see, further, that feeling threatened by the inevitability of death is really the same experience as
feeling alive, and that as all beings are feeling this everywhere, they are all just as much "I" as myself.
Yet the "I" feeling, to be felt at all, must always be a sensation relative to the "other"-to something
beyond its control and experience . To be at all, it must begin and end. But the intellectual jump that
mystical and psychedelic experiences make here is in enabling you to see that all these myriad I-centers
are yourself---not, indeed, your personal and superficially conscious ego, but what Hindus call the
paramatman, the Self of all selves.

(3)

As the retina enables us to see countless pulses of energy as a

single light, so the mystical experience shows us innumerable individuals as a single Self.

The fourth characteristic is awareness of eternal energy, often in the form of intense white light, which
seems to be both the current in your nerves and that mysterious e which equals mc2. This may sound
like megalomania or delusion of grandeur-but one sees quite clearly that all existence is a single energy,
and that this energy is one's own being. Of course there is death as well as life, because energy is a
pulsation, and just as waves must have both crests and troughs, the experience of existing must go on
and off. Basically, therefore, there is simply nothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal
energy of the universe playing hide- and-seek (off-and-on) with itself. At root, you are the Godhead, for

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (4 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

God is all that there is. Quoting Isaiah just a little out of context: "I am the Lord, and there is none else. I
form the light and create the darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things."

(4)

This is the sense of the fundamental tenet of Hinduism, Tat tram asi---"THAT (i.e., "that subtle Being of
which this whole universe is composed") art thou."

(5)

A classical case of this experience, from the

West, is in Tennyson's Memoirs:

A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been
all alone. This has generally come upon me thro' repeating my own name two or three
times to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness
of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless
being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest,
the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable
impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true
life.

(6)

Obviously, these characteristics of the psychedelic experience, as I have known it, are aspects of a single
state of consciousness--for I have been describing the same thing from different angles. The descriptions
attempt to convey the reality of the experience, but in doing so they also suggest some of the
inconsistencies between such experience and the current values of society.

Opposition to Psychedelic Drugs

Resistance to allowing use of psychedelic drugs originates in both religious and secular values. The
difficulty in describing psychedelic experiences in traditional religious terms suggests one ground of
opposition. The Westerner must borrow such words as samadhi or moksha from the Hindus, or satori or
kensho from the Japanese, to describe the experience of oneness with the universe. We have no
appropriate word because our own Jewish and Christian theologies will not accept the idea that man's
inmost self can be identical with the Godhead, even though Christians may insist that this was true in the
unique instance of Jesus Christ. Jews and Christians think of God in political and monarchical terms, as
the supreme governor of the universe, the ultimate boss. Obviously, it is both socially unacceptable and
logically preposterous for a particular individual to claim that he, in person, is the omnipotent and
omniscient ruler of the world-to be accorded suitable recognition and honor.

Such an imperial and kingly concept of the ultimate reality, however, is neither necessary nor universal.
The Hindus and the Chinese have no difficulty in conceiving of an identity of the self and the Godhead.
For most Asians, other than Muslims, the Godhead moves and manifests the world in much the same
way that a centipede manipulates a hundred legs-spontaneously, without deliberation or calculation. In
other words, they conceive the universe by analogy with an organism as distinct from a mechanism.
They do not see it as an artifact or construct under the conscious direction of some supreme technician,
engineer, or architect.

If, however, in the context of Christian or Jewish tradition, an individual declares himself to be one with

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (5 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

God, he must be dubbed blasphemous (subversive) or insane. Such a mystical experience is a clear
threat to traditional religious concepts. The Judaeo-Christian tradition has a monarchical image of God,
and monarchs, who rule by force, fear nothing more than insubordination. The Church has therefore
always been highly suspicious of mystics, because they seem to be insubordinate and to claim equality
or, worse, identity with God. For this reason, John Scotus Erigena and Meister Eckhart were condemned
as heretics. This was also why the Quakers faced opposition for their doctrine of the Inward Light, and
for their refusal to remove hats in church and in court. A few occasional mystics may be all right so long
as they watch their language, like St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, who maintained, shall
we say, a metaphysical distance of respect between themselves and their heavenly King. Nothing,
however, could be more alarming to the ecclesiastical hierarchy than a popular outbreak of mysticism,
for this might well amount to setting up a democracy in the kingdom of heaven-and such alarm would be
shared equally by Catholics, Jews, and fundamentalist Protestants.

The monarchical image of God, with its implicit distaste for religious insubordination, has a more
pervasive impact than many Christians might admit. The thrones of kings have walls immediately
behind them, and all who present themselves at court must prostrate themselves or kneel, because this is
an awkward position from which to make a sudden attack. It has perhaps never occurred to Christians
that when they design a church on the model of a royal court (basilica) and prescribe church ritual, they
are implying that God, like a human monarch, is afraid. This is also implied by flattery in prayers:

O Lord our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler
of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth: most heartily we
beseech thee with thy favor to behold....

(7)

The Western man who claims consciousness of oneness with God or the universe thus clashes with his
society's concept of religion. In most Asian cultures, however, such a man will be congratulated as
having penetrated the true secret of life. He has arrived, by chance or by some such discipline as Yoga or
Zen meditation, at a state of consciousness in which he experiences directly and vividly what our own
scientists know to be true in theory. For the ecologist, the biologist, and the physicist know (but seldom
feel) that every organism constitutes a single field of behavior, or process, with its environment. There is
no way of separating what any given organism is doing from what its environment is doing, for which
reason ecologists speak not of organisms in environments but of organism-environments. Thus the
words "I" and "self" should properly mean what the whole universe is doing at this particular "here-and-
now" called John Doe.

The kingly concept of God makes identity of self and God, or self and universe, inconceivable in
Western religious terms. The difference between Eastern and Western concepts of man and his universe,
however, extends beyond strictly religious concepts. The Western scientist may rationally perceive the
idea of organism-environment, but he does not ordinarily feel this to be true. By cultural and social
conditioning, he has been hypnotized into experiencing himself as an ego- as an isolated center of
consciousness and will inside a bag of skin, confronting an external and alien world. We say, "I came
into this world." But we did nothing of the kind. We came out of it in just the same way that fruit comes

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (6 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

out of trees. Our galaxy, our cosmos, "peoples" in the same way that an apple tree "apples."

Such a vision of the universe clashes with the idea of a monarchical God, with the concept of the
separate ego, and even with the secular, atheist/agnostic mentality, which derives its common sense from
the mythology of nineteenth-century scientist According to this view, the universe is a mindless
mechanism and man a sort of accidental microorganism infesting a minute globular rock that revolves
about an unimportant star on the outer fringe of one of the minor galaxies. This "put-down" theory of
man is extremely common among such quasi scientists as sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists,
most of whom are still thinking of the world in terms of Newtonian mechanics, and have never really
caught up with the ideas of Einstein and Bohr, Oppenheimer and Schrodinger. Thus to the ordinary
institutional-type psychiatrist, any patient who gives the least hint of mystical or religious experience is
automatically diagnosed as deranged. From the standpoint of the mechanistic religion, he is a heretic and
is given electroshock therapy as an up-to-date form of thumbscrew and rack. And, incidentally, it is just
this kind of quasi scientist who, as consultant to government and law-enforcement agencies, dictates
official policies on the use of psychedelic chemicals.

Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the
basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization
equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to
the use of technology in a hostile spirit---to the "conquest" of nature instead of intelligent co-operation
with nature. The result is that we are eroding and destroying our environment, spreading Los
Angelization instead of civilization. This is the major threat overhanging Western, technological culture,
and no amount of reasoning or doom-preaching seems to help. We simply do not respond to the
prophetic and moralizing techniques of conversion upon which Jews and Christians have always relied.
But people have an obscure sense of what is good for them-call it "unconscious self-healing," "survival
instinct," "positive growth potential," or what you will. Among the educated young there is therefore a
startling and unprecedented interest in the transformation of human consciousness. All over the Western
world publishers are selling millions of books dealing with Yoga, Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and the
chemical mysticism of psychedelic drugs, and I have come to believe that the whole "hip" subculture,
however misguided in some of its manifestations, is the earnest and responsible effort of young people
to correct the self-destroying course of industrial civilization.

The content of the mystical experience is thus inconsistent with both the religious and secular concepts
of traditional Western thought. Moreover, mystical experiences often result in attitudes that threaten the
authority not only of established churches, but also of secular society. Unafraid of death and deficient in
worldly ambition, those who have undergone mystical experiences are impervious to threats and
promises. Moreover, their sense of the relativity of good and evil arouses the suspicion that they lack
both conscience and respect for law. Use of psychedelics in the United States by a literate bourgeoisie
means that an important segment of the population is indifferent to society's traditional rewards and
sanctions.

In theory, the existence within our secular society of a group that does not accept conventional values is
consistent with our political vision. But one of the great problems of the United States, legally and

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (7 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

politically, is that we have never quite had the courage of our convictions. The Republic is founded on
the marvelously sane principle that a human community can exist and prosper only on a basis of mutual
trust. Metaphysically, the American Revolution was a rejection of the dogma of Original Sin, which is
the notion that because you cannot trust yourself or other people, there must be some Superior Authority
to keep us all in order. The dogma was rejected because, if it is true that we cannot trust ourselves and
others, it follows that we cannot trust the Superior Authority which we ourselves conceive and obey, and
that the very idea of our own untrustworthiness is unreliable!

Citizens of the United States believe, or are supposed to believe, that a republic is the best form of
government. Yet vast confusion arises from trying to be republican in politics and monarchist in
religion. How can a republic be the best form of government if the universe, heaven, and hell are a
monarchy?

(8)

Thus, despite the theory of government by consent, based upon mutual trust, the peoples

of the United States retain, from the authoritarian backgrounds of their religions or national origins, an
utterly naive faith in law as some sort of supernatural and paternalistic power. "There ought to be a law
against it!" Our law-enforcement officers are therefore confused, hindered, and bewildered-not to
mention corrupted-by being asked to enforce sumptuary laws, often of ecclesiastical origin, that vast
numbers of people have no intention of obeying and that, in any case, are immensely difficult or simply
impossible to enforce-for example, the barring of anything so undetectable as LSD-25 from international
and interstate commerce.

Finally, there are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs. First, use of these drugs may be
dangerous. However, every worth-while exploration is dangerous-climbing mountains, testing aircraft,
rocketing into outer space, skin diving, or collecting botanical specimens in jungles. But if you value
knowledge and the actual delight of exploration more than mere duration of uneventful life, you are
willing to take the risks. It is not really healthy for monks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic
for Jesus to get himself crucified, but these are risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures. Today
the adventurous young are taking risks in exploring the psyche, testing their mettle at the task just as, in
times past, they have tested it---more violently---in hunting, dueling, hot-rod racing, and playing
football. What they need is not prohibitions and policemen, but the most intelligent encouragement and
advice that can be found.

Second, drug use may be criticized as an escape from reality. However, this criticism assumes unjustly
that the mystical experiences themselves are escapist or unreal. LSD, in particular, is by no means a soft
and cushy escape from reality. It can very easily be an experience in which you have to test your soul
against all the devils in hell. For me, it has been at times an experience in which I was at once
completely lost in the corridors of the mind and yet relating that very lostness to the exact order of logic
and language, simultaneously very mad and very sane. But beyond these occasional lost and insane
episodes, there are the experiences of the world as a system of total harmony and glory, and the
discipline of relating these to the order of logic and language must somehow explain how what William
Blake called that "energy which is eternal delight" can consist with the misery and suffering of everyday
life.

(9)

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (8 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

The undoubted mystical and religious intent of most users of the psychedelics, even if some of these
substances should be proved injurious to physical health, requires that their free and responsible use be
exempt from legal restraint in any republic that maintains a constitutional separation of church and state.

(10)

To the extent that mystical experience conforms with the tradition of genuine religious

involvement, and to the extent that psychedelics induce that experience, users are entitled to some
constitutional protection. Also, to the extent that research in the psychology of religion can utilize such
drugs, students of the human mind must be free to use them. Under present laws, I, as an experienced
student of the psychology of religion, can no longer pursue research in the field. This is a barbarous
restriction of spiritual and intellectual freedom, suggesting that the legal system of the United States is,
after all, in tacit alliance with the monarchical theory of the universe, and will, therefore, prohibit and
persecute religious ideas and practices based on an organic and unitary vision of the universe.

(11)

(1) See W. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). (

back

)

(2) An excellent anthology of such experiences is R. Johnson Watcher on the Hills (1959). (

back

)

(3) Thus Hinduism regards the universe not as an artifact, but as an immense drama in which the One
Actor (the paramatman or brakman) plays all the parts, which are his (or "its") masks or personae. The
sensation of being only this one particular self, John Doe, is due to the Actor's total absorption in playing
this and every other part. For fuller exposition, see S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life (1927); H.
Zimmer, Philosophies of India (1951), pp. 355-463. A popular version is in A. Watts, The Book---On the
Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966).

(back

)

(4) Isaiah 45: 6, 7. (

back

)

(5) Chandogya Upanishad 6.15.3. (

back

)

(6) Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir by His Son (1898), 320. (

back

)

(7) A Prayer for the King's Majesty, Order for Morning Prayer, Book of Common Prayer (Church of
England, 1904). (

back

)

(8) Thus, until quite recently, belief in a Supreme Being was a legal test of valid conscientious objection
to military service. The implication was that the individual objector found himself bound to obey a
higher echelon of command than the President and Congress. The analogy is military and monarchical,
and therefore objectors who, as Buddhists or naturalists, held an organic theory of the universe often had
difficulty in obtaining recognition. (

back

)

(9) This is discussed at length in A. Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of
Consciousness (1962). (

back

)

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (9 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]

PsychoReligious

(10) "Responsible" in the sense that such substances be taken by or administered to consenting adults
only. The user of cannabis, in particular, is apt to have peculiar difficulties in establishing his
"undoubted mystical and religious intent" in court. Having committed so loathsome and serious a felony,
his chances of clemency are better if he assumes a repentant demeanor, which is quite inconsistent with
the sincere belief that his use of cannabis was religious. On the other hand, if he insists unrepentantly
that he looks upon such use as a religious sacrament, many judges will declare that they "dislike his
attitude," finding it truculent and lacking in appreciation of the gravity of the crime, and the sentence
will be that much harsher. The accused is therefore put in a "double-bind" situation, in which he is
"damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't." Furthermore, religious integrity-as in conscientious
objection-is generally tested and established by membership in some church or religious organization
with a substantial following. But the felonious status of cannabis is such that grave suspicion would be
cast upon all individuals forming such an organization, and the test cannot therefore be fulfilled. It is
generally forgotten that our guarantees of religious freedom were designed to protect precisely those
who were not members of established denominations, but rather such (then) screwball and subversive
individuals as Quakers, Shakers, Levellers, and Anabaptists. There is little question that those who use
cannabis or other psychedelics with religious intent are now members of a persecuted religion which
appears to the rest of society as a grave menace to "mental health," as distinct from the old-fashioned
"immortal soul." But it's the same old story. (

back

)

(11) Amerindians belonging to the Native American Church who employ the psychedelic peyote cactus
in their rituals, are firmly opposed to any government control of this plant, even if they should be
guaranteed the right to its use. They feel that peyote is a natural gift of God to mankind, and especially
to natives of the land where it grows, and that no government has a right to interfere with its use The
same argument might be made on behalf of cannabis, or the mushroom Psilocybe mexicana Heim. All
these things are natural plants, not processed or synthesized drugs, and by what authority can individuals
be prevented from eating theme There is no law against eating or growing the mushroom Amanita
pantherina, even though it is fatally poisonous and only experts can distinguish it from a common edible
mushroom. This case can be made even from the standpoint of believers in the monarchical universe of
Judaism and Christianity, for it is a basic principle of both religions, derived from Genesis, that all
natural substances created by God are inherently good, and that evil can arise only in their misuse. Thus
laws against mere possession, or even cultivation, of these plants are in basic conflict with biblical
principles. Criminal conviction of those who employ these plants should be based on proven misuse.
"And God said 'Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the
earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed- to you it shall be for meat.... And
God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Genesis 1:29, 31.

back

file:///E|/Books%2022/Religion%20and%20philosophy%2...-%20Psychedelics%20and%20Religious%20Experience.htm (10 of 10) [14.08.2007 00:42:29]